Donald Trump, with nothing to lose, may be finally ready to go nuclear. Not literally, of course; this is all about Cold War 2.0.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is worried the situation between the US and Russia today is even more dangerous than during the Cold War. President Putin's foreign policy adviser Sergey Karaganov argues we've been at a pre-war situation for at least eight years now, since the Georgia fiasco. There are even calls to "bring back the Cold War" -- when the rules of engagement were clear.

Six months ago the Valdai Club published a crucial report jointly signed by Andrey Sushentsov, associate Professor at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and the Wilson Center's Michael Kofman warning that a US-Russia hot war could surge "unexpectedly" in a simultaneous "vertical and horizontal escalation."

That would be a consequence, once again, of the absence of clear rules and "no tangible separation between war and peace" -- configuring a variation of full spectrum war that includes electromagnetic space and cyberspace, as the first targets in the conflagration would be command and control, finance, energy and information networks.

Hillary Clinton by now has been solidly unveiled as the certified candidate of the Wall Street-industrial-military-surveillance complex -- a bipartisan "War Party" nebulae uniting neocons and neoliberalcons. As I argued, she is ready to go to war and has even coined a remixed axis of evil.

And that brings us to the frankly surrealist scenario of Donald Trump as The Last Man Standing between sanity and WWIII.

Hello, Daisy

It ain't over till the last (rigged?) Diebold machine sings. November 8 will be all about turnout in a basketful of "deplorable" states.

And for all the 24/7 scandal time of non-stop groping and kissing and lewd locker room misbehaving, Trump seems to be ready to limp toward the finish line just as he began; an all-out populist/nativist/nationalist fighting open borders (a Clinton mantra, as revealed by the latest WikiLeaks Podesta email dump); "free" trade; neoliberal globalization; and regime change/bomb them into democracy/"humanitarian" imperialism.

US East Coast business circles discreetly supporting Trump's platform are encouraging him to focus on only two issues; "to attack Obama and Clinton for blowing up Libya and Syria, creating the flow of refugees that is disrupting the civilized world;" and to attack Hillary as a Wall Street surrogate, stressing "the 2008 debacle was engineered by derivative manipulations where losses were reimbursed to Wall Street, while middle class home owners were not bailed out. These firms are all supporters of Hillary."

And then there's the ultimate, defining issue; the US-Russia Cold War 2.0 that could turn into WWIII. Washington is de facto holding open a nuclear first-strike capacity against Russia, part of the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine -- and Hillary fully supports it. To unmask her as "Mother Warmonger," businessmen supporting Trump have suggested he go -- literally -- nuclear, issuing a remixed version of the notorious ad that guaranteed the 1964 electoral victory to Lyndon Johnson.

That would be something to fully enrage the neocon cabal supporting Hillary, as in the Dr. Strangelove minion Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, who is openly peddling all-out military "victory" against both Russia and China.

Milley's speech was of course fully authorized. It can be easily deconstructed as an act -- like in the last hurrah of the neocons. There are serious characters even inside the Pentagon who see the melting of the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) mechanism as pure madness. As for the (lame duck) White House, Secretary of State John Kerry broke off negotiations with Foreign Minister Lavrov only briefly. Moscow keenly pointed out that it was Kerry who renewed his calls one day after the supposed serious break.

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia (more...)

"We are in the midst of a profound change of paradigms: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network. Rob Kall has interviewed many of the leaders, both thinkers and activists, of this global cultural transformation. In this eminently readable book, he weaves their statements, values, and ideas into a coherent and inspiring whole. Bottom-Up is a joy to read!"

Fritjof Capra, author of The Web of Life and The Hidden Connections, coauthor of The Systems View of Life